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Books on writing?

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Starbeam:

--- Quote from: Enjorous on November 10, 2010, 06:49:20 PM ---Were my dad here he'd fourth On Writing, he uses pieces of the book in his Freshman Comp class. fwiw

--- End quote ---
I got my copy in one of my writing classes in college; I think it was for my novel writing class.

Oh, also, not so much a book on writing, but one that's handy to have read at least once--Strunk and White. I forget the actual title, just the authors, but it's pretty much a grammar handbook.

Aludra:
Tor is having a series of columns on Books on Writing.  You all may be interested in following it.  The first one reviewed is John Scalzi's: You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2010/11/writers-on-writing-youre-not-fooling-anyone-when-you-take-your-laptop-to-a-coffee-shop-by-john-scalzi

cestlavie:

--- Quote from: Aludra on November 10, 2010, 08:01:50 PM --- The first one reviewed is John Scalzi's: You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop
--- End quote ---

I really LOVE the name of that book! Oh, I wonder how true it is?!!

Donald Maass' book is called The Fire in Fiction, one of the books Starbeam referred to. I recommend it for an overall writing book any day.

RobJN:

--- Quote from: Starbeam on November 10, 2010, 07:41:40 PM ---Oh, also, not so much a book on writing, but one that's handy to have read at least once--Strunk and White. I forget the actual title, just the authors, but it's pretty much a grammar handbook.

--- End quote ---

Elements of Style

Starbeam:

--- Quote from: RobJN on November 10, 2010, 10:58:02 PM ---Elements of Style

--- End quote ---
Yeah, that one.

Other books I have--
101 Habits of Highly Successful Novelists--This one has snippets and quotes from lots of different authors on different topics like procrastination, ideas, agents, editing, etc.

Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury--Collection of essays Bradbury wrote about how he writes, and some are just reflective about what he's written, like one looking back at writing Fahrenheit 451.

A book by Terry Brooks, similar to the one by Bradbury

A book with lots of questions and answers by Janet Evanovitch.  Haven't read it completely, but skimming through looks like a lot of it was taken from the FAQs on her website, with maybe some extra stuff.

Others that I haven't read yet--Danse Macabre by Stephen King, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers(though I don't know that this one will be helpful for me, skimming it, it looks like a lot of what I learned in writing classes), On writing Horror, On writing Mystery--both Writer's Digest Books, Orson Scott Card's book about writing science fiction, a Writer's Digest thing about writing science fiction/fantasy--it excerpts Scott Card's book, and has some stuff from Terry Brooks, I think, and Time to Write.  The last I haven't read because I've been too busy writing, and most recently reading through the draft to revise.

Most of my stuff tends to lean towards speculative fiction cause that's what I write, and I get more out of essays and such than most How-tos.  I might have some other books, but at least a couple of them I stopped reading because I found them less than useful.

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